For twelve seasons, McGarrett and his team hounded international
secret agents, criminals, and Mafia syndicates
plaguing the Hawaiian Islands. With
the aid of District Attorney and
later Hawaii's Attorney
General John Manicote (Glenn
Cannon), McGarrett was successful in sending most of his
enemies to prison. One such Mafia syndicate
was led by crime family patriarch Honore Vashon (Harold Gould), a character introduced in the
fifth season. Blaming McGarrett for the death of his son, Vashon
swore vengeance using all of the resources available to him. Most
episodes of Hawaii Five-O ended with the arrest of
criminals with McGarrett's catch phrase
to Williams, "Book 'em, Danno!", with the offense occasionally
added after this phrase, such as "-Murder one!". Other criminals
and organized crime bosses on the islands were played by actors
such as Ricardo Montalban,
Gavin MacLeod, and Ross Martin as Tony Alika. For the 12th and
final season, series regular James MacArthur had left the show (in
1996, he admitted he had got tired and wanted to do other things),
as did Kam Fong. Unlike other characters before him, Chin Ho did
not just vanish from the show but was murdered while working
undercover, trying to expose a protection ring in Chinatown (last
episode, season 10). Previously Chin's family who lived locally had
been mentioned. In this episode, his wife had died and his daughter
now lived on the (US) mainland. New characters Jim 'Kimo' Carew
(William Smith), Lori Wilson
(Sharon Farrell), and Truck (Moe Keale) were introduced in season 12 alongside
returning regular Duke Lukela.

The
Five-O team consisted of four to five members (small for a
real state police unit) and was portrayed as occupying a suite of
offices in the Iolani
Palace. The office interiors were a soundstage set.
Curiously, it lacked its own radio network, necessitating frequent
requests by McGarrett to the Honolulu Police Department dispatchers
to "Patch me through to Danno". McGarrett's tousled yet immovable
hairstyle and proclivity for wearing a dark suit and tie on all
possible occasions rapidly entered popular culture.

The show's action and straightforward story-telling left little
time for personal stories such as wives and girlfriends, though a
two-part story in the first season dealt with the loss of
McGarrett's sister's baby. Occasionally, a show would flash back to
McGarrett's younger years or to a romantic figure. The viewer is
left with the impression that McGarrett, like Dragnet's Joe
Friday, is wedded to the police force and to crime-fighting at
this point in his life. Tee-totaller McGarrett often worked very
late at the office, long after all others had gone home.

In the episode "Number One with a Bullet (Part 2)", McGarrett tells
a criminal that "it was a bastard like you who killed my father."
His 42 year old father was run down and killed by someone who had
just held up a supermarket. Three days later at the funeral, 13
year old Steve McGarrett knew that he wanted to be a cop to stop
such people.

Hawaii Five-O survived long enough to see reruns of early
episodes enter syndication
while new episodes were still being produced. The 12th season was
repackaged into syndication under the title
McGarrett.

Since McGarrett was also a commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve, he
sometimes used their resources to help investigate and solve
crimes, hence the Navy was credited in the closing credits of some
episodes.

Creation of the show

The story behind the show's inception is inconsistent. A few
sources claim the idea for the show came from a conversation
producer Leonard Freeman had with then-Hawaii Governor John A.Burns.
The
governor's office, Iolani
Palace, ultimately became the setting for Five-O
headquarters.Another source claims Freeman wanted to set a
show in San
Pedro, but his friend Richard
Boone convinced him to shoot it entirely in Hawaii. A third
source claims Freeman discussed the show with Governor Burns only
after pitching the idea to CBS.

Before settling on the name "Hawaii Five-O", Freeman considered
titling the show "The Man".

Casting

Freeman offered Richard Boone the part
of McGarrett, although he turned it down; Gregory Peck and Robert Brown were also considered.
Jack Lord, then living in Beverly Hills, was asked at the last
moment. He read for the part on a Wednesday and got the part and
flew to Hawaii two days later. On the following Monday he was in
front of the cameras. Freeman and Lord had worked together
previously on an unsold TV pilot called Grand Hotel.

Kam Fong, 18-year veteran of the Honolulu Police Department,
auditioned for the part of Wo Fat, the villain. However, one look
at him and Freeman decided he would cast Kam Fong for the part of
Chin Ho Kelly. Freeman got the name Wo Fat, the villain of the
pilot episode, from a restaurant in downtown Honolulu. The name Chin Ho came
from Chinn Ho, the owner of the Ilikai Hotel where the penthouse shot shows Steve McGarrett in
the opening titles.Richard
Denning, who played the Governor, had retired to Hawaii and was
asked to come out of retirement for the show. Zulu was a Waikiki
beach boy and a local DJ when he got the part of Kono for the next
four years. John Nordlum was hired as a stunt man for Jack
Lord.

Production

The first
season was shot in a rusty military Quonset
hut in Pearl
City, nick-named Mongoose Manor by the actors and
cast. The roof leaked and rats gnawed at the cables. The
show then moved to a warehouse at 22nd Avenue and Kaimuki (which is
now used by the National Guard). A third studio was also built on
18th Avenue at Diamond Head and was used for the next 11
seasons.

A problem from the beginning was the lack of a movie industry in
Hawaii. Many people learned their jobs as they went along—not just
the crew and main cast, but notably the many local people who ended
up in the show. Jack Lord was known as a perfectionist who insisted
on the best from everyone. Some suffered from his temper when he
felt they did not give their best, but in later reunions, they
admitted that Lord’s hard driving force had made them better actors
and Hawaii Five-O a better show. Lord’s high standards
also helped the show last another seven years after Leonard
Freeman’s death at the end of the fifth season while undergoing
open heart surgery.

It was rumored for many years that Jack
Lord was a silent partner in all aspects of the production of
Hawaii Five-O, even more so as the series grew in
popularity during the 1970s. To critics and viewers, there was no
question that Jack Lord was the center of the show, and that the
other actors frequently served as little more than props, standing
and watching while McGarrett emoted and paced around his office,
analyzing the crime. But occasionally episodes would focus on the
other players, and let them showcase their own talents.

Very few episodes were shot outside of Hawaii. At least two episodes
were shot in Los
Angeles, one in Hong
Kong and one in Singapore. Episodes shot in these locations were the
only ones not to bear the "Filmed entirely on location in Hawaii"
legend.

Credits

The opening title sequence was created by noted television director
Reza S.Badiyi. The show would begin with a cold open suggesting the sinister plot for the
night's program, then cut to a big ocean wave and the start of the
dynamic theme song. A fast zoom-in to the top balcony of the Ilikai
Hotel would follow, where McGarrett would turn to face the camera,
followed by many quick-cuts and freeze-frames of Hawaiian scenery
(including, memorably, model Elizabeth
Logue turning to face the camera), a grass-skirted hula dancer from the pilot, "Cocoon" (played by Helen
Kuoha-Torco, who is now a retired professor from the University of Hawaii
community college system), and the supporting players, ending
with the flashing blue light of a police motorcycle racing through
a Honolulu street.

At the conclusion of an episode, after the obligatory "Book 'em
Danno!", Jack Lord would narrate a teaser for the next week's
episode, often emphasizing the "guest villain," especially if it
was a recurring character such as Khigh Dheigh, Hume Cronyn, etc. He would open by saying "This
is Jack Lord inviting you to be with us next week for " and then
closing the preview by saying, "Be here...Aloha!" The next episode
teasers were removed from the syndicated episodes to clear time for
additional commercial sales, although most have been restored in
the second, third and fourth season DVD releases.

There are two versions of the closing credits portion. During the first
season, the theme music was played, along with a short film of a
flashing blue light attached to the rear of a police motorcycle
racing through Kalakaua Avenue in Waikiki heading
west. The film is shown at twice the normal speed, as can be
seen for people walking across a crossing behind the police
motorcycle. In later seasons, the same music played over a short
film of some outrigger canoeists battling the surf.

Legacy

The show was the longest running crime show on American TV until
the police drama Law &
Order surpassed it in 2003. The popularity of the
Hawaii Five-O format spawned various police dramas on all
the major television networks since its debut.

Known for the location, theme song, and ensemble cast, Hawaii
Five-O is also noted for its liberal use of exterior location
shooting throughout the entire 12 seasons. A typical episode, on
average, would have at least two-thirds of all footage shot on
location, as opposed to a "typical" show of the time which would be
shot largely on sound stages and
backlots.

The term "Five-O" was adopted by American youth culture as a street
slang term for the police.

The television show Magnum P.I.
was created after Hawaii Five-O ended its run in order to
make further use of the production equipment left there. The first
few episodes made direct references to Five-O, suggesting
that it takes place in the same fictional universe as the earlier
show.

Criticism of the show pointed out that the vast majority of
characters were Caucasian, while only 40% of the population of the
state identify themselves as non-Hispanic Caucasian. However, many
local people were cast in the show. The show was racially and
ethnically diverse by the standards of the late 1960s, but the show
did not have a comparable gender diversity. The first run and
syndication were seen by an estimated 400,000,000 people around the
world.

A measure of the show's continued high popularity is that it was
lampooned in Mad Magazine, in
a typical not-very-subtle satire called "How-Are-Ya Five-O", which
appeared in 1971. The characters were renamed Steve "McGarrish" and
"Dummy" Williams.

The closing-credits image of the police car flashing light
point-of-view would be satirized years later in the opening credits
of the TV series Police
Squad! as well as The Naked
Gun film series. Coincidentally, those shows starred
Leslie Nielsen, who was in the guest
cast of the Hawaii Five-O pilot.

A one-hour pilot for a new series was made in 1996 but never aired.
Produced and written by Stephen J. Cannell, it starred Gary Busey and Russell Wong as the new Five-O
team. James MacArthur briefly returned as Dan Williams, now
governor of Hawaii. Several cameos were made by other Five-O
regulars

On October 6, 2009 FusedFilm.com confirmed that CBS Television was
keen on trying once again to revamp the series with Alex Kurtzman
and Roberto Orci (Star Trek, Fringe) to develop the series along
with Peter M. Lenkov (CSI:NY).

Theme song

Another legacy of the show is the popularity of the Hawaii
Five-O theme song. The song was composed by Morton Stevens, who also composed numerous
episode scores. The song has been covered by The Ventures, and also by Radio Birdman, a punk-era band from Sydney. A
short cover can be seen at the end of the Massacre Palestina´s song, "Madamme X".
The song is particularly popular with college and high school
marching bands, especially at the
University of Hawai'i, where
it has become the unofficial fight song. In 1982 Australian ska/pop band No Nonsense recorded
a version for their 'Round Tuit' release.

Although the theme song is most widely known as an instrumental, it
has been released with at least two different sets of lyrics. The
first, by Don Ho, starts with the familiar
tempo, then settles into a ballad style. The second, by Sammy Davis, Jr., titled "You Can Count on
Me (Theme from Hawaii Five-O)," maintains the driving style of the
original instrumental throughout. The Radio Birdman version was called 'Aloha, Steve
& Danno' only the middle section of the song was the original
version, the rest of the song was a tribute to the show "Steve I
wanna say thank you for all you've done for me, my nights are dark
and empty when you're not on t.v." Another Australian band The Porkers recorded a cover of the Radio
Birdman track in 1994 with Chris Masuak from R.B. on guitar.

In the Australian movie The Dish
it was requested that a teen age band should play the national
anthem of the United States on the occasion of a visit of the U.S.
ambassador to a small Australian town. They played the Hawaii
Five-O theme song instead.

Episodes

Suppressed episode

The second season episode "Bored She Hung Herself" has not been
broadcast since its original airing in 1970 and is not included in
the second season DVD box set, released on July 31, 2007. According
to Mrs. Leonard Freeman (wife of the late creator of the show),
speaking to some fans at the 1996 Five-O convention, someone tried
the hanging technique depicted in the show (supposedly
yoga-related, but more like autoerotic asphyxiation) and killed
themselves. As a result, the show was not rebroadcast and never
included in any syndication packages.

Reboot

On August 12, 2008, CBS announced that it was to bring Hawaii
Five-O back to the network schedule, targeted for the
2009-2010 television season. The new version was to be an updated
present-day reimaging of the original, this time centering around
McGarrett's son Chris, who succeeded his late father as the head of
the unit. Ed Bernero, executive producer and showrunner of
Criminal Minds, was to helm
the new take, which he described as "Hawaii Five-O, version 2.0".
It was also to incorporate most of the iconic elements from the
original, including the "Book 'em Danno" catchphrase, into the
remake. Bernero, who was a fan of the original and had a ring tone
of the series' theme song on his cellphone, had always wanted to
bring the series back to TV. In October 2009, it was revealed that
Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci had signed on to script a pilot
episode, and Peter Lenkov will serve as
the series showrunnner should it be picked up as a series.

Streaming media

CBS Interactive had presented the
entire first season of the show online via Adobe Flash streaming media.As of September
2009, selected episodes are available at CBS.com.These are
full-length episodes available free of charge, but with ads
embedded into the stream of each episode.

DVD releases

CBS Home Entertainment
(distributed by Paramount) has
released the first seven seasons of Hawaii Five-O on DVD
in Region 1. Seasons 2-7 on DVDcontain episode promos by Jack Lord. The Seventh Season was released on
October 20, 2009; bonus features are unknown.[6644]

DVD Name

Ep #

Release Date

Additional Information

The First Season

24

March 6, 2007

Original pilot

Retrospective

The Second Season

24

July 31, 2007

Episode entitled "Bored She Hung Herself" not
included in set

The Third Season

24

January 22, 2008

Episode Promos

The Fourth Season

24

June 10, 2008

Episode Promos

The Fifth Season

24

November 18, 2008

The Sixth Season

24

April 21, 2009

Episode Promos

The Seventh Season

24

October 20, 2009

Other media

A
soundtrack album featuring Morton Stevens' theme and incidental music
was issued by Capitol
Records in 1970. One of the instrumental pieces on
the album, "Call to Danger", was excerpted as background music
accompanying a "Special Presentation" logo that CBS used to introduce its prime time television specials throughout the 1970s
and 1980s.

Hawaii Five-O was the subject of six novelizations. Each one had a plot line written
for the book and was not based on a television episode. The first
two books were published by Signet Paperbacks in 1968 and 1969.
After that were two juvenile hard covers published by Whitman
publishing in 1969 and 1971 and finally two more books were
published in England.